I’m not sure if it should be a source of embarrassment or pride (or perhaps neither), but I was up and running on Facebook back in late 2004, back when Friendster was still the top dog of social networking. As a student at the time, I was able to witness first-hand how quickly Facebook was able to secure a foothold in the daily lives of college students. Writing on “the wall” on your friends’ pages, poking people, joining an endless string of groups — these were just a few of the many fun and quirky features why helped Facebook became an instant hit with students.
Still, at the time no one could have really predicted that Facebook would go on to become a household name, not just in tech, but across the globe. That said, it’s always interesting to take a stroll back in time and look at how Facebook was viewed well before it became the de facto social network it is today.
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CNBC points us to a 2004 video interview with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg which was originally recorded 11 years ago this week. It’s somewhat fascinating to take a look back and realize that even Zuckerberg himself wasn’t quite sure where Facebook was headed, aside from the desire to launch the site at even more schools.
“When we first launched we were hoping for maybe 400 or 500 people… and now we’re at a 100,000 people, so who knows where we’re going next,” a baby-faced Zuckerberg said at the time. “We’re hoping to have many more universities by fall, hopefully over 100 or 200. And from there we’re going to launch a bunch of site applications, which should keep people coming back to the site, and maybe we can make something cool.”
About 8 years after this interview was filmed, Facebook’s user base would top 1 billion people.
